Elysium
by Harlequin Sequins
Summary: She conquered him and he was a willing captive, yielding so easily beneath her gold-wrought gaze. Jacob/Renesmee. One Shot.


AN: Hey, just had this one shot here and wanted to share it with all of you. Still sort of blocked, but I'm trying to fight my way out. A little wordy but...I figure it's a writing exercise, more description than dialogue.

Just for the record, I don't like Twilight...at all. No offense to Twilight fans, I mean no harm. But I do like Jacob Black...not so much Renesmee. I guess this is sort of just practice. I'm thinking of writing some sort of Jacob/Leah thing...one shot or...whatever.

Disclaimer - I don't own Renesmee Cullen or Jacob Black.

* * *

It was the same meadow where her father first confessed his want, his need, his _love_.

The meadow that marked the monumental moment in which Bella had finally accepted her fate.

It was a haven of light, a velvet spectrum freckled with the sway of color-laced flowers. It was like the face of heaven reflecting off the surface of mortality and to Renesmee, it made Earth seem like smooth glass, a sheath of placid water that embraced the shallow image of the stretch of blue. Above. _Beyond_.

It made it feel like, behind the earthly pretense, there was hope for something more waiting in the wavering depths of tomorrow. In the slow-shedding skins of the present.

Now that she was old enough to understand, she knew. She knew that providence had sealed her life to to a different beginning than that of her mother's.

Bella fell in love with ice. With the pale fragments of immortality.

But Renesmee turned to fire.

He was all heat, a creature fashioned of its fervent splendor. All turbulent passion and solid, sometimes deciedly stubborn, determination. His temper was a flare in the midst of the white-gold morning, but never did he let the force of it strike her.

With Renesmee, he was a patient flame, a slow-burning blaze that nothing could smother. Not jealous, forgetful death, not the constnat ebb and flow of life. With everything else, he could be temperamental, he could summon the shudders from the deepest, darkest caverns of hate and let it flow from his veins like venom, sated by the quaking release.

Never with her…he couldn't.

A storm raged around them, but in the meadow, it was calm – the eye of the storm.

* * *

-PROTECTOR-

When she was little, spending time with Renesmee was an infrequently indulged comfort. Edward always balked at the idea of Bella's temperamental 'mutt' having any sort of connection with his daughter until she was old enough to decide on her own what to do with him.

But as much as he would have liked to ignore the possibility of his daughter's sealed destiny, Bella simply wouldn't let it be.

She encouraged Jacob's presence in Renesmee's life, trusting him to keep her safe. It was a place to invest her guilt, when she had poured the entirety of her ability to love into Edward instead of Jacob. Bella considered that, if Jacob could not have her love, he could have Renesmee's instead.

She couldn't have chosen a better match for her little one. Even if she'd tried.

The first time Jacob took Renesmee to the meadow, she was three years old. Already, she was the portrait of beauty, her skin as soft as rose petals and flashing like stars beneath the betraying light of the sun. Her hair was like red-gold twine, still caught in their infant whorls. She giggled so easily then at his antics, his efforts to earn her affection met with enthusiasm that was unmatched, in his opinion. Never in his life would he have imagined himself so willing to play peek-a-boo in broad daylight.

But hearing her musical laughter, a spring symphony that stole across the flower-speckled meadow, made everything, even peek-a-boo, seem a justifiable lapse in character for him.

The day was mellow in her advances, the brush of the breeze so quiet as it moved past that it seemed to meld into the hushed sound of his breathing. Leaves overhead trembled in the transient rush, vibrant in their wakeful green. Flowers bowed their soft-hued heads, twirling around the mismatched pair like a patchwork halo.

They strayed for as long as the morning would allow, Jacob putting aside the matter of age and pride to properly entertain his easily amused guest. The seconds poured so softly into minutes, and the minutes succumbed finally to the fitful hours that threatened to pass so quickly.

It was nearing noon when she finally began to rub her sleepy, golden eyes with one plump little fist. The other hand, equally wrapped in porcelain folds of delicate, infant skin, reached for him. "Jake." She muttered, familiarizing herself with her company's name.

He smiled then, the realization of her acknoledgement pooling in him like sieve through a sand. A fluid serenity. A gentle recognition of fate set into its natural motion.

"Jake," she tried once more.

She crawled toward him and curled into his side, a porcelain doll. He brushed a lock of copper hair from her face as she slowly submerged beneath the veil of peaceful dreams.

"I'm here, Nessie," he murmured. "I always will be."

* * *

-FRIEND-

When they found themselves in the meadow again, it was for a picnic. Renesmee had reached puberty, all stubborn wit and clumsy wiles. She was still much too young to embrace her destiny, but Jacob was patient. He had time. Time to spare. Time to let the years that promised to lead her slowly to him flourish like the wildflowers in their precious meadow.

It was summer then. A miracle of repreive amidst the the usual ambush of rain-filled clouds, for now absent from the painted sky. All the color that marked the advent of spring had begun to fade to a pale green-gold, illuminated by a tyrant sun. Even the heavens, once an effervescent cobalt blue, turned taciturn in its blanched, sleepy color. Tired. Wishing for rest.

It was the scene that lay before them, as constant as the ground beneath their feet. As long as the world persisted, the hands of father time continuing to mold his grand design, the meadow did not falter.

He taught her how to do cartwheels that day, surprising her with an otherworldly grace that seemed odd in contrast to his enormous size. Jacob was glad just to be with her again. Time without her seemed lonely, forlorn. But still, it ambled on, offering change for him each moment he could steal with her. Her hair had long lost its child's curls, long and wild in its coppery shade. Her laugh was still a symphony. Her eyes a depthless tawny that told stories all their own, stories that the words of seasoned writers and voices of even the most charismatic of orators could never emulate. Time seemed to march on. But the foundations of life didn't change.

They lay on their backs as the sun began to dip low into the horizon, setting fire to the slate-gray sea. It seemed a stone, listless and ancient in its weary wanderings. Still, the heat lingered overhead, a consoling haze. She sighed then, her breath rising and falling like a shallow breeze.

"You ever wonder if life had a plan for you before you were even born?"

_Yes. I'd say I know exactly how that feels._

_In fact, I'm well acquainted with the feeling._

_Because it happened to me. No choice. No way out. Just...destiny and that was it for me._

He turned to her, committing her words to memory. Every murmur to him was scripture. Always important, from the smallest whimper to the most ferocious of screams.

The weight of them rolled through him, crashing against the shores of reason. Wondering. Wandering. She was wading through doubt and decision, trying to pick up the small fractures of beginnings and endings that she found on her way down the path of life. The end of chilhood. The beginning of adolescence.

"I feel like it does. Like it's waiting for me, but I just have to follow the right path." She sighed again. "What if I go the wrong way? Will it still be waiting at the end of a wrong turn?"

He touched her arm. A muted console that spoke volumes. _I'll be at the end of any path you take. When you get there, and if you'll have me, I'll be waiting. __It will be a choice, Nessie...Always an open option if you should ever consider something else, something different._

_I'll never make you do anything that you don't want to do._

_But I'll always love you, even if you decide to turn away._

"You promise you won't ever leave, Jake?"

He smiled then, a glimpsing wisp of her forever. "Promise."

She grinned back.

* * *

-LOVER-

Nessie was beginning to fade into the sands of time, a dying blossom in the midst of change. Renesmee began to take form in the ashes, reborn from a place of fragile existence and the crumbling ruins of another end. She wasn't a little one anymore.

No longer did she burst forth in childlike wonder with coltish exuberance at the discovery of a butterfly or a twittering bird, every sight a wonder to behold. The days of carthweels and adolescent musings underneath an afternoon sky were long laid to rest as the age of innocence dwindled, a frail shard of forgotten identity. The etches of childhood still remained in her, locking her in a vice hold.

It wouldn't let go…at least not yet.

Jacob became lost in the transition. The line between child and woman began to blur, a shapeless threshold that he fasten to as his last chance for certainty. His roots delved into treacherous ground. Renesmee was old enough to understand, old enough to embrace her predetermined fate as her own or to cast it from her, chase her own dreams. She was untameable, a flash of strong-willed, copper-gold that still held small traces of the gregarious toddler he recalled, the uncertain Nessie he knew.

He wanted her to choose him. No force, no demands. If she was to be with him, it would be out of love, never obligation.

And so, the days surrendered to autumn. Leaves began to turn their myriad of shades and, finally, fall. The wind became bitter, its biting cold driving the corpses of leaves through the gutters and across somnolent land. The cadence of rain thrummed against the hollow earth and the sidewalks turned to glass beneath pedestrian feet. Cold settled deep into the bones of the trees; their ancient bodies groaned, gnarled by the hands of time.

But she was still there. There as she'd been since Jacob had first brought her there, her spirit stitched to the fabric of the earth as if she had always belonged there and always would. Standing in the epicenter of that dead, water-colored meadow, she seemed to bloom, a pale flake of rain-doused light in the haze. Her copper hair sighed beneath the weight of the falling water, but her eyes never faltered. They ghosted through him, and he could feel their feather-soft fingers sifting through him, willing him to hear her. Willing him to stay.

"Jacob, I finally know what path to take," she shouted against the torrent around her. "I finally figured it out."

Renesmee breathed so heavily, as if the surging epiphany that filled her stilled her heart and pounded against her weakened lungs.

Her words were feathers, frail and frightened as she was, and they dusted over him like a small gust of wind."It took my entire life to sift through the clues, through even the vaguest hints you gave me. But I finally realized that you're supposed to have me…."

She paused, lashes drawn back like black curtains to reveal her tawny eyes. Stark against the pale of her skin. Like a vivid sun against the tepid heavens.

"And I'm supposed to have you," she conquered him, and he was a willing captive, yielding so easily beneath her gold-wrought gaze. "If only...you'll have me."

He tried to meld his feet to the ground, keep them far from where she stood now, a beacon of light in the gray-tinged darkness. It was dangerous, letting her have him now. There was no mistaking that he was hers, her god-given right, an inheritance passed down from her mother. There was no denying that he loved her, loved her from the moment she first opened her eyes and immersed herself in her first drawn breath. From the instant he realized that she was his entire world. He had loved her through the years as his life stretched against its mortal seams and fused with hers. Loved her as she blossomed like a wildflower in the careless brush of dashing seasons and drowsy hours.

She didn't say anything more. Her eyes plunged like gold-rimmed raindrops, lashes stark against the angles of her pale features. Arms wove around him like tangling vines and he gathered her into his warmth, feeling a shiver course through her like as spark of life.

He felt it too.

_I promised I'd always be here, Renesmee. _

_Here I am._

* * *

-LIFE-

It was nearing the close of the season, bowing out as the wings of warmth began to outstretch their potential fingers as they did every year, a ritual that could never be forgotten. They tested the waters of rebirth and new life, surrounded by a newborn canvas that was theirs to shape. The last ashes of winter fell in powder-soft flecks of white, cold to the touch, but its raw beauty was so pure and untarnished by the cruelty of the world that, despite its unfeeling tendencies, was a wonder to behold.

The day was beginning to curl into itself too, a dying paper lantern caught in cold-blue flame. The burnt edges began to give way to encroaching dusk and armies of stars settled in the shadowy aftermath of sunlight's lingering death. It was a slow agony of fading radiance and the bleeding colors stained the ashen sky, warm scarlets and cold violet hues seeping into the polychromatic scene.

Jacob sighed as he watched the flickering stars overhead. Crickets began to sing their nocturne in the brush that lined the entrance to the forest gloom and the swansong of the passing day resonated through the heavy night air, a restless haunt wandering the quiet realms of Elysium. Tranquility was at hand. The rush of the world subsided, easing into opaque dreams, away from the cares of waking humanity. For now, they could lay to rest their troubles and turn to the simple acceptance of reverie.

A small arm slithered over his bare stomach, drinking in the inherent heat that was only his. A soft sigh brushed past him. Renesmee.

As she shifted, her stomach pressed against him, swollen and breathing with the small spark of life that lay nestled within. He felt something rustle behind the walls of flesh that contained it. Restless. Eager to reach its feelers out and discover that strange void that lay beyond his warm home.

"Did you feel that?" She whispered, a laugh weaving like ribbon through her voice. She sighed again as his hand closed gently over the swollen planes of her belly. "I think someone wants out. _Now_."

"It's not time yet," he replied. "They'll have to wait."

She drifted into silence, drinking in the essence of the quiet moment. In the darkness, he could still see her, sharpened by the moonlight that began to softly glow overhead. All remnants of childhood were gone from her. In place of little Nessie, the innocent little one he once knew, there was a woman now. She had reeled through the seasons of her life and he had followed her through every turbulent change of scenery. Warm, easy spring, a fragile blossom that he protected from the ways of te beguiling world. The passionate awakening of summer, as she fumbled through gaucherie to find her way to him. The measured, careful steps of autumn as it teetered over the edge of weathered winter, the end of one heartfelt masterpiece and the beginning of another.

His thumb brushed over the jutted rise and elegant fall of her cheek. Her eyes closed against the affectionate gesture and she leaned in to capture its warm, soft-composed grace. There was always promise in Jacob's caresses. Promise of love. Promise of tomorrow.

After all, she was his entire world.

She melted into him, falling into eternity. "Promise you'll never leave, Jacob?"

He was there to catch her. "I'll be here," he whispered against her downy, copper hair. "I promise."

And he always would be.

* * *

THE END.


End file.
